At last! Chrome for iPhone and iPad is here, and it (mostly) rocks

Among the slew of products unleashed during the Google I/O developer conference is one many users of Apple’s iOS devices have wanted for some time: A version of Google’s Chrome browser that runs on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

Chrome for iOS became availablein the iTunes App Store yesterday, which indicates Apple and Google can still collaborate despite ongoing rancor. If you’re an iOS user who loves Chrome on your desktop or notebook computer, you’ll want to download this ASAP. Of course, it’s free.

But there are a few caveats. First, don’t expect the incredibly zippy performance usually associated with Chrome. While the browser is fast enough for comfortable use, it’s not as frisky as Apple’s own Mobile Safari. That’s because this Chrome is basically a skin atop the Web page renderer built into iOS. As John Herman writes at BuzzFeed Tech, it lacks the Nitro Javascript engine that Safari uses. Pages heavy in Javascript – such as, um, Gmail – won’t be as snappy in Chrome for iOS as they are in Safari.

More bad news: Apple doesn’t allow other browsers to be the default, so tapping on links in email or other applications will only launch those Web pages in Safari.

In addition, there are some odd quirks. I’ve seen strange text displays on some sites, and one of my Twitter followers pointed out that Chrome doesn’t use one of handiest features built into iOS: tapping on the status bar at the top to instantly move to the top of a page.

Despite these failings, Chrome for iOS has immediately replaced Safari as the go-to browser on my iPhone and iPad for one big reason: It syncs bookmarks, passwords and tabs with my desktop copies of Chrome. I now have the same Web environment everywhere, regardless of the platform. Since I work on Windows, Mac, iOS and yes, even Android devices, this is huge.

Chrome for iOS installs quickly and asks for your Google login. Once you’ve signed in, your desktop bookmarks and passwords are almost instantly available.

On the iPhone, tabs are displayed horizontally, and you can pull down on the front tab to reveal what’s behind it. You can open tabs from bookmarks, manually typing or pasting in a URL or you can pull up new pages from tabs open on other devices, such as your desktop computer.

To get rid of a tab, you can either tap the X or slide the tab off to the side. It works the same as on Chrome for Android – which, by the way, came out of beta this week.

On the iPad, Chrome for iOS looks a lot more like Chrome for traditional computers, with tabs marching across the top of the page.

One of the best iPad features is the ability to pull in the desktop version of a site, rather than a crippled mobile version. For example, when you initially call up Twitter’s page, you’re shown the mobile site. Once you tell Chrome to give you the full version, that’s what you’ll get every time thereafter.

Chrome for iOS also offers Chrome’s Incognito mode, which lets you surf without leaving a history of your activity on the device.

For me, Chrome for iOS’s benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, and it’ll be the browser I choose to open on my iDevices from here on out.